


Calcium Carbide + Ice Powers + Movie Night

by holbytlanna



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Burning alive, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I promise, Ice Magic, Mac has Magic, Team as Family, Torture, fluff at the end, shady chemistry, shady magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:35:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28065591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holbytlanna/pseuds/holbytlanna
Summary: Mac has ice powers. That doesn't mean fire doesn't hurt him.
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), MacRiley at the end if you really want, Riley Davis & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Wilt Bozer & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 46





	Calcium Carbide + Ice Powers + Movie Night

**Author's Note:**

> So I was at work the other day, and I was daydreaming fic ideas (because my job is not very exciting), and I remember thinking “you know, I don’t think the MacGyver fandom has any burned-at-the-stake fics.” Because I’m a whumper and apparently I like torturing this poor boy in oddly specific ways?? Oh well.
> 
> I bounced a few ideas around with my dear friend fancyf1amingozz (more like I word-vomited and she said “that’s nice dear”) and this… well, it just kind of happened. 
> 
> Technically, it isn’t actually being burned at stake. My idea shifted a bit as I did research. 
> 
> I’m going very hokey on the magic, because I’m not in any fandoms that use it so I don’t know a whole lot. Mac has ice powers, that’s the extent of my world-building here.
> 
> If anyone wants to send recommendations for burned-at-stake fics I may have missed for this fandom, or would be interested in me writing a less-magical version of this one, hit me up! As always, questions, comments, concerns, rude remarks? All welcome in the comments :)

Having magic had its advantages and disadvantages. 

For one thing, it helped Mac out an awful lot on missions. He tried to use it as a last resort, but it was one hell of a last resort, and had gotten himself and Jack out of more tight spots than either could count. 

For another, ice powers were often incredibly nice to have, especially living in LA where it could average upside of 80 degrees in summer. Any ice or snow Mac made would melt naturally, but while it lasted, it could be pretty nice. And he could always be counted on to create a winter wonderland out of his back deck around Christmastime.

He rarely got fevers, because his body ran cold. That was another bonus. His magic would take over and cool him down, sometimes even without Mac knowing or prompting it.

And that was the problem.

Usually, Mac had complete control over his powers. He was very good with them, too, able to do both very large and powerful things, and very small, delicate things with them. But sometimes, when Mac was in danger, his powers took over without his say so.

It only ever happened near fire, or other heat sources. When his magic (“Mac-gic,” as Jack liked to call it) sensed that he was overheating, it would engage to help him, either by cooling his body or by neutralising the heat source. It didn’t matter if Mac wanted to be cooled down, or even if he was conscious. He had no say in the matter.

He hated losing control like that. It would leave him exhausted, almost more than regular magic fatigue did, because he tried to fight with it. He always lost. His powers, though a part of him, were stronger than he was. 

But usually, the benefits of being one of the few people in the world with magic outweighed the problems with it. Mac tried his hardest to use his magic powers for good, to help people. And he had worked hard to also make sure he was known for his other field skills. He was more than the Frosty the Snowman and Elsa and Jack Frost jokes that had followed him his whole life. He was a US Government operative in his own right.

And unfortunately, US Government operatives make much-desired captives.

Mac still was kind of fuzzy on the details of who had taken him, and where, but he knew why. Why anybody singled him out of his whole team to capture. They wanted to use him for his powers or do painful experiments or some other thing of that nature. Very rarely did they assume he had any real value beyond his magic. They underestimated him, guessing that he was simply a tool for the team and not really an important part of it, and why would a subordinate tool have information, or access codes? As far as most BadGuys were concerned, he was a mascot, Jack’s Macsicle, and nothing more. 

So there Mac was, in a freezer, awaiting his captor’s inevitable speech. Keeping him in a freezer was a smart move. If everything was already frozen, Mac’s ice powers really didn’t have a whole lot to work with. But they didn’t account for Mac’s MacGyvering skills. He was halfway through picking the lock when he was caught.

They dragged him from the freezer into a regular-looking room with a metal basin in the middle of it. It looked like iron to Mac, but he wasn’t sure until they lifted him bodily and stood him in it. 

It was definitely iron. Fortunately, whatever it was that caused Mac to have magic wasn’t the same as the Fae. Mac wasn’t honestly sure if Fae existed — he had never heard of one, if they did — but either way, iron had no effect on him whatsoever. Neither did steel, unless it was in the form of restraints, like the handcuffs currently encircling his wrists.

His captor, a man in maybe his late forties, early fifties, walked up to Mac with a lit match in hand. Mac showed no signs of fear, because he honestly wasn’t afraid. Fire was more an annoyance than anything. As the man lit his shirtsleeve, Mac’s magic engaged to freeze out the fire. A tiny hiss was all that could be heard as the fire went out. And the burn on Mac’s arm, though it had certainly hurt, healed rapidly before their eyes. 

Having magic of any sort gave one an edge in healing faster than most people. And for Mac, burns healed the quickest of all injuries. 

All of this seemed to intrigue his captor, because his eyes lit up as he sparked another match. It was just as effective as the first one: magically extinguished, and rapidly healed.

A heated iron had much the same results. Ice clung to the red tip of the tool, freezing out the fire and warping the metal. And the sear on Mac’s side took a few minutes to heal completely, but soon smooth, unblemished skin was all that could be seen through the hole burnt in his shirt. 

“Alright, fairy boy, it looks like I’m going to have to get creative.”

Mac hated nicknames. Well, that wasn’t true, “Mac” was a nickname, and always a million times better than his given name, Angus. But he had been “Mac” for so long that it had stopped feeling like a nickname to him. No, the kind of nicknames he hated were the ones referencing his powers (Frosty or Fairy or Icey were some of the most common ones), and his appearance (Blondie was only okay when it was Matty, and any variant of Blue-Eyes was just weird).

Jack had ignored Mac’s dislike of nicknames from the second he had met him in Afghanistan. Mac had been everything from “Carl’s Junior” to “Snow White” to “Baby Blue” for a long time. And when the two of them had moved past their initial dislike of each other, Mac had become “Macsicle.” Macsicle stuck, along with the ever-present “hoss.” Mac still didn’t really like nicknames, but he had grown to appreciate that it was just a part of who Jack was, that he gave everyone a pet name of sorts. And he’d gotten used to it by now. Jack didn’t mean any harm, anymore.

_ Where is Jack? _ He was supposed to be rescuing Mac, and the sooner, the better, because the BadGuy who had him captive was pouring some kind of material into the iron basin. It was greyish in colour, and looked almost like rock salt, in terms of shape and texture. It crunched beneath his shoes. 

“Do you know what this is?” his captor asked him, as he continued to heap it into the basin. It had covered the toes of Mac’s shoes by now.

“Some kind of crystalline substance.” That was really all Mac could go on, since he couldn’t very well bend down to touch it. He didn’t even know if it was safe to do that.

His captor took out a spray bottle, and spritzed Mac up and down with the contents. It was a clear liquid, and it smelled vaguely garlicky.

“It can be crystalline, that is what you’re standing in, but this has been dissolved in water.” 

A greyish, garlicky-smelling crystalline that could be dissolved in water? Likely flammable, given Mac’s previous experiences. 

“Uh. Calcium carbide.”  _ Why, what good would that do? _ It was flammable, sure, but this guy had already seen that Mac’s powers would put out a fire. 

The man laughed as he finished spraying Mac down. “Very good! I see you do have a brain behind those big blue eyes.” Mac glared, but was sure the effect was ruined by the fact that he was now soaked, head to toe, in the calcium carbide mixture. And he still couldn’t think why. When mixed with water, it formed acetylene, a highly flammable gas, but his ice would still put out any fires.

His ice. 

Mac’s eyes went wide, and his captor noticed. “Ah, you’ve figured it out. A much better brain than I expected a fairy to have.” 

Mac didn’t have time to debate whether or not he was a fairy. His ice, activated by the fire, would melt. Into water. Which would continue triggering the calcium carbide into combusting.

“Even I don’t know what exactly this will do to you,” he went on, pacing a circle around the basin as Mac tried to think of a way out of this. He couldn’t find one.  _ Jack will come, busting down the door, any minute now. He has to.  _

“Let’s find out.”

A match lit. And when it did, the acetylene in the air on and around Mac lit up too.

Mac had heard some people describe pain as fiery before. They were all wrong. 

He had been right, that the second fire came too near his skin, his ice magic took over, trying to quench the fires and save him. But the ice melted, dripping water onto the calcium carbide pile he stood in, releasing more acetylene, which caught on fire. It cycled.

Mac tried to fight his powers. This would stop if he could gain control. He could stop ice from triggering the reactions further. But his magic had always been stronger and more stubborn than he was. It kept trying to save him. It didn’t understand, there was no reasoning with it. That would be like trying to reason with a hurricane.

His clothes burned to ash. His skin bubbled with heat, and sudden cold as he healed. And then bubbled right back up again. Healing and burning and healing and burning.

Mac screamed.

There was no way to describe the pain, and the exhaustion it caused him. His magic, in saving him, was killing him. It would keep pouring out of him until he had no more strength left.

He didn’t know if he screamed words. Maybe he called for Jack, maybe he begged for this to end. Maybe it was just a wordless howl of pain, pain, pain.

His body was shutting down, every nerve overloaded. He was going to die, his magic was going to drain him entirely and he would be consumed by the flames. No rising up like a phoenix, not for him. He was going to die here.

—————

Jack followed the sound of screaming. A loud wail of pain, unmistakably Mac’s voice. Jack was in the mood for murder, hearing the ungodly sounds of his partner suffering.

He didn’t know what to expect when he kicked in the door, but it wasn’t to see Mac on fire with some psychotic bastard laughing. One bullet was all it took.

It looked like the icy Mac-gic was in a full-out war with the fire. Mac, in the middle, was chained at his wrists and naked, clothes seemingly burned off. 

Jack couldn’t tell why the fire wasn’t being eaten up by the ice, but he wasn’t going to dwell on it. With a total disregard for his own self (that Mac would be mad at him for later), he pulled Mac out of what looked like a metal kiddie pool, laying him down on the cool ground and patting out the fires that lingered on his skin. 

Mac’s screams had died down to whimpers, and his tear-filled eyes fluttered weakly for a moment. Jack wasn’t sure if Mac had registered that he was there before those ice-blue eyes rolled back into his head. His raw, blistered body went slack in Jack’s hold. 

Jack wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but he knew that magic fatigue had stolen his boy’s consciousness, and if Mac didn’t get some help with the massive extent of his injuries, the magic would just keep trucking along, trying to heal its host, until it sapped all his life away in the process. He had to get Mac onto the chopper and back to Phoenix, where they were equipped to handle someone with Mac’s peculiarities. They were only maybe a twenty minute flight away.

The only problem was Jack didn’t know where he could touch Mac. Everywhere looked like it would hurt. So Jack just grit his teeth and stood up with Mac in a bridal carry, and booked it out to the chopper. 

Mac lay still, not moving in the slightest once they got him into medical. Doctors hooked him up to fluids, and spread a salve all over him. Jack couldn’t say what was in the salve, or what precisely it did, but it would help heal the burns, taking some of the strain off of Mac’s magic. And by extension, off of Mac himself. 

He was so pale. Jack had seen a few close-calls with magic fatigue, but this was the closest one yet. He never wanted to see a closer one. 

Mac slept for almost two days. During that time, Jack had his hands and arms mummified because of the burns he had sustained pulling Mac out of the fire. Which sucked, because it meant Jack couldn’t run his hands through his Macsicle’s hair, a little singed on the edges. They would have to go get it cut once they were both allowed out of medical.

The extent of Mac-gic that he had used had also significantly drained Mac’s body of fluid. They pumped what seemed like a whole bathtub’s worth into him, in order to replenish what he had lost and aid his magic in healing him.

So far, Mac was holding steady. They had gotten to him in time that his powers hadn’t completely sapped his life trying to save it. He would be okay. His body was healing slower than it normally did due to the extent of the damage. Still faster than a regular person would — still faster than Jack’s hands. Jack didn’t really believe in karma or fate, but  _ something  _ was laughing at the reversal of injuries from the time Mac had tried burning his hands to pull Jack out of the fire. Of course, Mac had healed within minutes, that day, but still.

Jack was still waiting on Mac to wake up. To open those eyes that could go from chilling ice to a peaceful river to a stormy ocean in seconds. There would still be quite a bit of healing, even after Mac woke up. A near-complete drain from magic fatigue left Mac, well, near-completely drained. He would need to lie low at home for a while and recover his strength. And Jack would be right with him, on medical leave until his hands healed up. And Bozer would be there too, he would have to be, because Jack couldn’t do anything with mummy-hands, and Mac would hardly have strength to feed himself. Riley would probably crash at Mac’s house with them all for at least one night, to make sure Mac and Jack weren’t trying to bribe Bozer into letting them do something stupid like take Mac’s bike out for a test drive. And crash it. Again. 

Finally, after two and a half days, Mac’s eyes fluttered open, scanning the room before settling on his partner. 

“Jack?”

Jack smiled. “The one and only. How’re you feelin’, Macsicle?”

Mac frowned slightly. “I’m tired,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, you look it, kiddo. You gave us all quite a scare there.”

Mac hummed, looking lost in thought. But he came back before Jack could say anything to snap him out of it, focusing on Jack. “You’re hurt.”

Jack scoffed. “Naw, ain’t nothin’. Don't you worry about me. I’ve had worse burns. I remember the time lightning struck the barn, back when I was prolly about ten or twelve. We had to get all the animals out, and yours truly had no fear of nothin’ back then. Not that I’m afraid of a whole lot now! But I digress. The barn was on fire and I had to help get the animals out, and I just dove right into it. And you’ll never believe it, but…”

Jack rambled on and on, watching as Mac’s eyelids drooped down and his still-too-pale face relaxed into sleep again. That had been the goal with the storytelling anyway. The more Mac rested, the faster he’d heal up. Even with his hands out of commission, Jack could still help his friend with that much. 

—————

**One week later**

Riley came back home from a mission, loaned out as in-the-van tech support to another team, looking just a little peaky. After she crashed at Mac’s house, it quickly developed into a fever. Nothing serious, just a common bug. But miserable nonetheless. 

Bozer had to stop Mac from using his powers to cool her off. Mac had only a few days ago been able to be awake all day, and no one wanted him to overdo things. Even Riley told him not to do it, even though she knew it would help. 

They compromised by putting the two of them on the couch together. Mac’s body temperature was naturally colder than most, so she latched onto him, and it brought her own temperature down some. After Jack took a few pictures with his recently un-mummified hands (Mac had half a mind to shoot an icicle through Jack’s phone), they all four of them plonked down to watch a movie. When Jack suggested  _ Frozen _ , like he had done every movie night since it had come out, Mac really did form an icicle, and slipped it down the back of Jack’s shirt. 

Bozer tried to reprimand him for using magic and exerting himself, but he was laughing too hard at Jack’s yelping and dancing around trying to dislodge the quickly-melting ice from his shirt. Riley chuckled and stole the remote while Jack was distracted, putting on some mindless heist movie they’d all seen a million times. Probably something like  _ Ocean’s Eleven _ or  _ The Italian Job _ . Mac didn’t know. Truth was, he was still not at 100% and he got tired pretty easily. And Riley was warm against him on one side, and Bozer on the other. He fell asleep less than halfway through. 

Riley felt when Mac’s breathing evened out into sleep, and she nuzzled her head against his shoulder, feeling sleepy herself. She knew Jack was tired too. The meds he was on for the pain in his hands took a lot out of him, and he pushed himself way too hard taking care of them all. He tried to keep awake by quietly making comments about the heist gear in the movie, but she knew he would fall asleep eventually. She glanced at the movie, but the sound of people talking and music playing and Mac’s deep, even breathing beneath her lulled her softly to sleep.

Bozer had one arm across Mac’s cool shoulders, with his hand resting against Riley’s head. Still too warm, but better than it had been. She was curled up like a cat, leaned into Mac. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep too, her breathing unconsciously syncing up with Mac’s. Bozer smiled. Jack was snoring softly, fast asleep in the plushy leather chair. Bozer grabbed the remote to turn the volume down. There were about to be some guns fired in the movie, and it just wouldn’t do to wake all the super-spies. Not when they were finally all getting some rest. 

They were all safe in Mac’s house, they didn’t need anyone to sit up and keep a watch over them. So Bozer gave in to the sleepy mood that had settled over the living room, and curled up against Mac’s arm, pressing his face into the coolness of his skin like a pillow, and drifted off.


End file.
